Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: Chris Schmandt Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: "Sleaze" Message-ID: <3506@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 3 Feb 90 16:55:35 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: Chris Schmandt Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA Lines: 39 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 74, message 6 of 8 In article <3435@accuvax.nwu.edu> drilex!carols@husc6.harvard.edu (Carol Springs) writes: >At New England Telephone, the charge is $.45/month and is called >Telesure-Basic. On a recent Saturday morning, I got a call from New >England Telephone hyping a great new service called "Telesure-Plus." >If I chose this wonder-option, then not only could I pay (some $ >amount I quickly forgot) every month from now on, but I would be >protected from getting billed $55/hour for service in my home if the >problem turned out to be in my phone equipment rather than in the >inside wiring. ... >...I got the Telesure-Plus hype call a week or two >after I'd reported the problem. Could be coincidence, I suppose. I just had one of my lines fixed. It was clearly an external wiring problem, so I disconnected by hodge-podge of phones, modems, fax, etc. and called it in. The repair order person started asking the usual questions; when I explained that I had a phone jacked directly into my network interface (and the line noise was audible to both of us) she said "sounds like our problem, we'll fix it by 6 PM Saturday". The line got fixed the next day. That evening we got a call from the NET telemarketing folks, which confused my wife as she interpreted it as a subtle threat to bill us $55/hr to fix the line. She was annoyed! Anyway, a question. The telemarketer seemed to imply that if someone came out to fix a problem, and it turned out to be on our side of the network interface, that we *had* to let them fix it on the spot at $55/hr. I had always assumed that you would have the option of telling them thanks but I'll do it myself. Does anyone know if you have a choice to refuse service on your own wiring if someone on the spot claims it is your wiring in response to your service call? chris